How does the strength and direction of diversity-stability relationships vary (1) among ecosystems and (2) between ecosystem-level and community-level stability?
Diversity-stability relationships are a foundation of community ecology but are controversial and highly debated. Historically, studies have focused on the stability of land-plant communities, focusing on how species richness promotes the stability of primary production or above-ground biomass (hereafter “ecosystem stability”). However, these studies may neglect underlying changes in community composition (hereafter “community stability”). As the biodiversity crisis worsens, understanding the strength and direction of biodiversity-stability relationships across multiple ecosystems and multiple facets of stability will be critical in predicting implications of biodiversity change. Additionally, the strength and direction of diversity-stability relationships may differ with the degree of abiotic variability in a system, but less research has compared diversity-stability relationships in multiple ecosystems.
We will gather long-term (>10 year) time series of primary producer communities across ecosystem types (e.g., grassland, forest, lake, kelp forest, coral reef) from the LTER network. Using this harmonized dataset, we will compare the diversity (i.e., taxonomic richness, functional richness, evenness) of the producer communities at sites within each LTER with the ecosystem-level and community-level stability (see key definitions) of those sites. We will then compare the direction and slopes of these relationships among LTER sites to explore (1) how these relationships vary among environments and (2) how diversity differentially influences ecosystem-level versus community-level stability.
Ecosystem stability: The extent to which production is constant through time. We will calculate ecosystem stability as the inverse of the coefficient of variation of producer abundance (e.g., biomass, cover) throughout the time series.
Community stability: The extent to which structural community composition is constant through time. We will calculate community stability as a function of the vector length in multivariate space between consecutive biological community matrices.
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